Children of Domestic Violence w/ Brian Martin
I realized that while there was a lot of research that was done by really some of the best researchers in the world that understood the impact of this issue, they understood the scale of this issue, there were not a lot of scalable tools that could
Welcome back to The Speaking and Communicating Podcast.
I am your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.
Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. By the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify, and leave us a rating and a review. Now, let's get communicating.
Now, let's get communicating with our guest today, joining us from New York, Brian Martin, who is the founder of Childhood Domestic Violence, and a nonprofit which focuses on childhood adversity and domestic violence.
He's here to help us unlearn the lies from those childhood traumas. And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show. Hi, Brian.
Roberta, thank you so very much.
It's a pleasure to be with you and to meet you.
It's a pleasure as well. Thank you for being here.
Understanding Childhood Domestic Violence
Why, of all things that you could have focused on when you founded a nonprofit, did you decide on childhood domestic violence?
It's a great question. And I also want to acknowledge that there are people that might be watching this, that grew up in one of these homes. They may still be involved in this issue.
And the issue was a difficult one. It's not something you're ready to engage with. If you're feeling like this is too much, you should take a minute for yourself.
You should step back. You can always come back. And you can also visit our website, which is cdv.org, cdv.org for tools that are available for you.
So I like to just say that ahead of time. This is indeed a heavy topic. And specifically, when you say childhood domestic violence, that has very little awareness, part of the problem.
Childhood domestic violence is what happens when someone experiences growing up, living with domestic violence. When in childhood, someone grows up witnessing domestic violence.
And that violence tends to be violence between a parent or towards a parent. It can be physical. It can be non-physical.
It is the least known of all of the adverse childhood experiences that one can face in their childhood home. And that is primarily the work that we do at the Childhood Domestic Violence Association.
Our role is to elevate that awareness and develop scalable tools that can be used anywhere in the world. And the bulk of them are complimentary. Why and how I got involved in this work.
You know, I wound up reaching out to a domestic violence shelter as an adult, close to my home, around the holidays. And I just said, hey, do you have any kids there that might need toys?
You know, these programs where you drop presents off around the holidays, toys for tots, you can drop them off in many places. And I had an idea to drop them off at a domestic violence shelter, thinking there might be some kids there.
They said, yes, you can stop by. And I drove there. And as soon as I walked in, I realized I didn't have anywhere near enough toys.
There were more children there than I could have imagined. There were so many children that were there.
And I was like, I didn't realize that many of the women who were there were these children just a generation or so ago, which I could understand because I grew up in one of those homes. So did my mother.
So did her boyfriend who caused much of the trouble in our home. So this was an issue that I had familiarity with, but I did not realize the extent of it. Very few realize the extent of it.
Most people who grew up in these homes believe they were the only ones. They don't even know what to call it.
I'm glad you brought this up because as you were talking, I'm thinking even here in South Africa, there's shelters for women who are victims of domestic violence.
I'm not sure how many people actually think about a shelter for the children who came from those homes.
Well, they'll be in the domestic violence shelter if they go to a shelter, but the vast majority of them, and UNICEF and the United Nations will say the number is around 275 million children globally.
Another 725 million adults who were these children. So you're talking about a billion people. This is a tremendous number.
They call it one of the most pervasive human rights challenges of our time. What makes it so pervasive and such a challenge is that there's so little awareness of the issue.
Even those who have experienced it don't really know what they experienced because they just witnessed it, that nothing happened, which is not accurate. So most of those, they're not in a shelter.
They've not received the services, the vast majority that they need.
When the women escape that violent environment, do they take the children with them to the shelter sometimes?
Most of the time they do. And if you think about a woman in that environment, trying to get out of that environment, the courage that it takes to even try to get out.
So as they're trying to get out, they're trying to care for themselves, they're trying to care for their child. If they're fortunate, they're able to go to a shelter. But many are not.
When I went to that shelter that one day, it just got me very emotional about the issue.
And then as I started to research the issue, I realized that while there was a lot of research that was done, by really some of the best researchers in the world that understood the impact of this issue, they understood the scale of this issue.
While there was a lot of research, there were not a lot of scalable tools. Scalable tools that could be used for adults who were those children, for adults who are currently parenting those children, and for the children themselves.
So that really began this journey with the nonprofit. It was simply to create some tools that weren't yet available to fill in some gaps that were not yet solved or filled in the market.
Because it's such a tricky subject. Then if we talk about the perpetrator of the violence, what happens to them once the woman and the children escape to a shelter?
You know how sometimes when they talk about rape, they say a lot of especially rape cases that come from dating don't get reported. Like what percentage of perpetrators are brought to justice or even spoken to? Or do the women even come forward?
Some of the men as well, by the way, I know they are men who are victims of domestic violence. But generally, what happens to the perpetrator?
Yeah, as I think about this issue of childhood domestic violence, which is you're growing up in an environment in a home where you're witnessing domestic violence, which can be physical or non-physical.
You have the children, or better yet, you have the people in childhood, right? There are no children, there are no adults. We just pass through different phases.
Same eyes that see what you saw when you were eight are the same eyes you're looking at now, you know? Same brain, same ears of what you heard. So you pass through childhood, then you pass through adulthood.
Lasting Impact
An interesting data point that really shocked me when I heard it from the researchers was that among the best predictors of whether you'll be in a domestically violent relationship is whether or not you grew up living in one, which makes sense.
But it's certainly not, not everyone who grows up one of these homes does, but the best predictor of whether you'll be in one of these relationships is whether or not you did grow up in one of these homes.
That's the education that we want to get out there. Those are the services, those are the tools.
Even if though you're now, yes, I've grown up one of those homes, but I'm in a relationship that's not in any way that way, some will make the mistake of thinking that there was no impact.
There still is an impact, and the impact primarily comes around this common cluster of negative beliefs that gets instilled at that time in childhood, that without conversation goes unquestioned, and now as you grow up and you're going through life,
you are just those negative beliefs. You are guilty. You should have been able to stop it. You couldn't stop it.
Of course, it's never a child's job to control the actions of an adult, but we don't register that at a young age. These are what we work through at the Childhood Domestic Violence Association, where we help people understand the lies and the truths.
And it's a very powerful technique, which is all mental health based.
So what are some of the things that those who are victims of Childhood Domestic Violence, what are some of the things that they say about themselves after growing up in a household like that?
Yeah, the common cluster of negative beliefs, and they don't even view them as negative, they just are. They don't think they're negative beliefs. That's just who I am.
That's just who you are. And the most common are they're guilty, meaning they should have done something to be able to stop it, they weren't able to, it's their fault in some way, and that carries forward into adulthood.
So does resentment, because why did I have to grow up in that way? So does sadness, feeling alone, because it's safer that way.
So does anger, does hopelessness, worthlessness, fear, the self-consciousness, and so does a feeling of being really unworthy of love. So those are the 10 most common beliefs.
And then there are different words that people could use for each of those. But in general, those are the emotions. Those are the feelings.
Those are the beliefs that then shape life.
It then explains why in most cases, or as you said, the predictor of the future relationship is that most likely, they will end up in a similar circumstance.
Well, the best predictor, when you look at, say, the 725 million adults who grew up in these homes that are currently alive, most of them are not in domestically violent relationships, because most don't end up in them.
It just happens to be the best predictor. Meaning, if someone is in a relationship that's domestically violent, and you ask them, you know, what was your childhood home like?
There's a very high probability that they would have grown up in one of these environments.
Oh, okay.
You know, if you do want to get to the root of it, has to be addressed, one's childhood and the beliefs associated with them needs to be a big part of that discussion.
Now, let's talk about the emotions that children feel when they grew up in domestic violence. How do they handle things like conflict or anger? Because they grew up watching mom and dad scream at each other, or sometimes it even got physical.
So when they become adults, how is their emotional intelligence when there's disagreement, when things don't go their way?
Naming the Experience
The interesting thing about when you grow up in one of these homes, this is not the only adversity you're facing.
There are many other adversities that are normally occurring in that household. As an example, there are things called Adverse Childhood Experiences, or the acronym is ACEs, A-C-E-S. And they were identified in the 90s by researchers.
And it's a landmark study. I think it's referred to as the most important study that nobody's ever heard of. It's called the ACE study.
And it talks about, you know, what are the most common adverse childhood experiences that one can experience in their childhood home? And there are 10 of them.
And this one, Childhood Domestic Violence, for those who experienced it, more than half of those people experienced five others. So it's not like they're just experiencing this in isolation.
These homes are like a lightning rod for bad things to happen to that person in childhood. So they may, Roberta, have been able to, okay, I know what physical child abuse is. I know what that felt like.
I know what emotional abuse was. I know there was alcoholism in the household. I know we were poor.
I can kind of name all those things. The problem with this one is that the children or a person in childhood, even when they get to adulthood, they can't name this one.
They don't know what to call the experience because they believe since they just witnessed it, maybe nothing happened. This often winds up being the missing puzzle piece that they don't yet have.
When you say to someone, well, you know when you grow up living in one of those homes, that's called Childhood Domestic Violence, that's the thing. That's something that happened. That's a noun.
That happened. They're able to have great compassion for themselves finally for the first time, and you just see their eyes get glassy as they blank. But then afterwards, of course, it's a bit clearer.
They're like, oh, wow, that makes so much sense. Then they're able to begin pursuing the answers to that question as to, wow, I'm not really guilty, right? Because it's never a child's job to control the actions of an adult.
Now finally, they can be unburdened. They can be free of that. It quiets the mind a bit.
So now the thoughts that keep spinning in the mind often far more unpleasant most of the time. Now that begins to change.
I'm wondering also with regards to that, do those who know that, okay, I grew up as a victim of childhood domestic violence, is it because sometimes the fight escalates to the children?
And so those who don't have a name for it, they think, oh, mom and dad used to just close the door in their bedroom and scream at each other and throw things at each other. And we would just eavesdrop outside their bedroom.
But we are not victims of childhood domestic violence, unless we were physically touched by the perpetrator in the house.
Very true. Yeah. I mean, physical child abuse kind of comes as part of this because, well, a lot of times the people in childhood are not the target.
They wind up getting involved and somehow they may come out to try to help, and they may get wrapped up in the violence. They also may be the target. They're not.
The number of times we've heard adults and children say that I would have rather myself that evening been hit if that was just the end of it, because then I could have known I could have just went to sleep and not worried about anything.
They would have rather experienced that themselves than have to deal with the uncertainty of what was to come throughout the course of the night. Normally, this happens at night.
You very astutely point out that the physical child abuse piece also, that just becomes the thing they experience as they recall it. Yes, mom and dad were fighting, but that was them. What happened to me was just the physical child abuse.
I've understood that, or at least I can name that. Why is it then my life so much different than I thought it would be? What else is there?
What am I missing? What they're missing is that other adversity that they experienced is the missing piece, because that adversity is the adversity that instills these beliefs in who you think you will never be.
And that stays with one through a lifetime. There was just someone the other day, we have an event that's occurring in New York, an inaugural event. A director is producing a short, a very short film for the event, and he donated his time.
We need a song, he wants a particular song. And so we posted that at one of the platforms for professional singers. And the number of responses that we got, that people just wanted to lend their voice to the issue.
But the messages were like, I'm 50 years old, I still haven't quite understood this issue. I've understood the rest. My life is still not where I thought it would be because...
And these are professional singers. These are people that have had a real career. But there are still gaps between where they are and where they want to be in life.
And they don't connect the dots between those gaps and this issue.
Because the way that they see themselves, they are things that they think, oh, I deserve to be in this space, or I'm not as good as those people.
You know, I'm just resentful. It's just who I am. I'm just that way.
It's just me. And they don't connect the dots between this issue because they don't know about it. You know, the moment that someone hears, you know, when you grow up in a home witnessing domestic violence, that's called Child of Domestic Violence.
Have you ever heard of that? Have you ever researched that? Not to go back and experience the pain, but to understand the impact.
They're like, no. And that is really the first step. The naming it is the first step.
And then after that awareness, one can begin to self-educate because this is not something that people like talking about a lot. They first begin to self-educate in their own way, privately, the way that they want to do it.
They're not likely to go into a social media post and thumb it up because all their family is on their social media channel. So that's not something that they're going to engage in.
It still is viewed as a private matter, which is part of the reason why the awareness is so low.
And it's not addressed. So if they say, okay, this is just who I am. I've always been that way.
Societal Consequences
How angry are they about the childhood that they had if they grew up in that kind of household?
Of the lies, if you will, of the negative beliefs, different people have different ones that are prominent.
Some people are really angry, which is why anybody who grew up in these homes are 79% more likely to commit a violent crime because they're angry.
Some are really hopeless, which is why if you grew up in one of these homes, you're six times more likely to commit suicide because it's just so painful up here. There's got to be something that's better.
Some are really sad, down, depressed, which is why if you grow up in one of these homes, you're 50% more likely to be addicted because the addiction, whether it be alcohol, drugs, whatever, at least provides some certainty that you can feel a certain
way, which is better momentarily than the sadness. So there's so many statistics, there are so many societal challenges that comes from this issue, but it all goes back to the beliefs and different people struggle with different beliefs.
The woman that I just referenced who reached out with the song, she said she did not get married until she was 55 because she just didn't believe she was worthy of love and she still doesn't even though she's married.
So depending upon the lie and sometimes it's many that cripple someone.
The good news is once they become aware of these negative beliefs and that they were just lies and false beliefs that were instilled at a time when you didn't have your like adult mind to challenge them, they can begin to see the other side of it.
They can begin to see that they're actually not guilty, they're free. They can begin to see that they're actually not resentful, they're compassionate.
And we have a tool that we've built, which is called on our website, cdv.org, it's the First Step Guide.
And it's just a simple, very elegant exercise to go through to begin to reveal the truths beyond the lies that are there, because they're just under the surface.
Because that's what they've been telling themselves for years. So there's this paradigm shift they need to have to start telling themselves a different story.
And the paradigm shift normally is just in the form of a question, because we're, you know, questions change our focus.
And like a question as, you know, if someone believes that they're worth less, literally worthless, you know, is someone who had to grow up in a home like this to go through what you had to go through, they're worth less than someone who didn't.
I actually kind of view it the other way, that someone who did have to go through this, there's actually a tremendous accomplishment that they've been able to achieve just by getting out of that home and being here today.
I remember having a conversation very early in life, I think I was like 17 or 18, and I got really lucky because I shared with a guidance counselor, I was not going to be going to college or anything like that, but I did wind up opening up to a
guidance counselor, and I said to her, I'm really very fearful, I'm very fearful, I lack confidence, I see the other students being really more confident than me. She said, wow, Brian, that's not really how I see you.
I said, yeah, well, of course, because I grew up in one of these homes, my mother's boyfriend would hurt her, and I wasn't able to stop it. If I had any courage, I would have been able to stop it and kill him. And I should have done that.
And then she looked at me like I had five heads and said, I don't really see it that way, Brian. I mean, after going through that, what could you possibly be afraid of now?
Like that probably, I can't imagine trying to get a job or going for an interview or public speaking or anything like that would compare to the fear of what that was. And right when she said it, I was like, that makes sense.
And then she gave me a book, and then that book led to another book. And as books do, they lead to another and another and another. And you begin to un-learn the lies yourself.
You begin to un-learn the lies yourself. You begin to realize that, yes, you lived through that. And it's not a story, because this is not a story you're telling yourself.
You did live through a really challenging household. So don't tell me, I'm telling myself a story. What you believe about yourself is not true.
And that's something that you need to think about. And really, it's like the same way that that guidance counselor gave me another way to look at it. That's what we do through all of our tools.
We just give you another way to look at it. So you realize you're not less than, you're actually more.
As they say, always ask better questions.
But if no one knows what to call it, if everybody's uncomfortable to talk about it, if the people who grew up in the home don't even know what it is, how do you have a dialogue to begin asking questions?
Healing Tools
Even, I would say, our work at the Childhood Domestic Violence Association, we work with people, consumers, that have grown up in these homes, but we also work with professionals. Half of our tools are for professionals, half are for people.
And I'm always like the delighted, the largest cohort of professionals that come to utilize our tools, our training, our toolkits, our therapists.
Because then they're able to, in their own practice, have the language to be able to address these issues when they come up, to get very specific.
We've heard from so many of them that just being able to have the vernacular of, look, this is called Childhood Domestic Violence, and it encodes this common cluster of negative beliefs. And you realize that, of course, it wasn't your job to stop it.
Would you expect a child to stop you from doing something? Just those simple things they've never heard before, and they find those moments to be breakthroughs in someone's understanding.
And then that understanding changes their perspective mentally, and then the physical begins to change in their life.
That is amazing. And I hope anybody who's a therapist listening, if they haven't heard of it before, can tap into the cdv.org website and get those tools, because at the end of the day, we are here to help people heal.
And even though you're not a Childhood Domestic Violence victim, but there's so many other traumas people go through, and so if they can have the language for this one, I think that's a real breakthrough, because as you were saying earlier, there are
As you do a lot of work, Roberta, with respect to communications, in New York City, there are a number of large companies that are involved in domestic violence.
And early on, when I started some of this research, I got lucky to meet some of those executives. And they were with very large corporations.
And some of the people I met with, I was explaining to them, you know, this part of the issue, because this is not domestic violence. It's, of course, connected to it, but it's a different issue.
And the thing that I heard from all of them, Roberta, was that it really is a communications challenge. It's a marketing challenge. It's a languaging challenge to exactly what you just said.
It's getting the words right as succinctly as possible, being able to open up a communication where there wasn't one. And that's a lot of the work. I mean, this should not be the least known adverse childhood experience.
You know, think of child sexual abuse, physical child abuse. These things have 100% global awareness. You know, if you experience either of those, you can go to ChatGPT or Google and you can type that in.
You can't type in anything here. You don't even know to type in something. And that is where the first step lies, to get to 100% universal awareness of the issue, so people can begin their own journey to understand they're far more than they knew.
Definitely needs more awareness.
I believe you made a documentary called The Children Next Door.
We made a few documentaries, The Children Next Door. We produced one with Nickelodeon called Family Secrets, and they're for different age groups. So one is for more elementary school children.
The other is for more junior high and high school and even adults. So early on, the idea of being able to create a film to let someone just sit back and not have to say anything, but just watch and try to find themselves and the different characters.
When something is so unspoken, to be able to see a story about it that reads your mind, makes you feel not so alone. It makes you feel validated.
And one of the tools that I'm most pleased with, I know that our film Family Secrets, which was produced with Nickelodeon, even in today's day and age where everything streams, those DVDs, we still send out DVDs to everything from addiction
facilities to zero suicide prevention facilities where they can receive this. And when they have a young person come in and they've experienced this child of domestic violence, they can press play on that DVD and let that young person sit there and
understand they're not alone, that there are more people like them. And that gives them great hope. And tools like that are in those type of organizations around the country and around the world.
Thank you so much for the work you do in bringing awareness to this issue. And one last thing, please tell us about your book, Invincible.
And thank you, Roberta, for the work that you do. The book really came out, and I think a lot of people wind up writing a book for this reason, because it just wasn't out there.
You know, I was looking for something like this, and the more I tried to find it, if it was there, I would have just read it and been delighted. It would have been much easier, because if the information was just all there, but it was not.
And then as I started working with the researchers and talking to more people, it became apparent that the exercises and the tools and going from the lies to the truths were really helpful.
And it would make more sense just to put this in the form of a book so that people can access it, no matter where they might be.
You know, the feedback continues to be, it's been more than 10 years now, and the feedback continues to be, it makes them feel better. They find themselves in the characters in the book.
And then they also have, you know, 10 very practical steps to take to undo some of the lies and move the truths.
Because there's no better feeling than realizing that you're not alone in what you're going through. And one last thing, Brian, before you go, please, again, for the purposes of our audience, please give us your website.
It is cdv.org, cdv.org, Child of Domestic Violence, cdv.org.
cdv.org, founder of this nonprofit. Brian Martin has been, I guess, today spreading awareness on this issue that hasn't garnered the attention that it should.
Thank you so much for bringing awareness using all the platforms, using your resources in order to help those who are victims of childhood domestic violence.
Roberta, thank you for your work. It's greatly appreciated.
My absolute pleasure, Brian. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a rating and a review on Apple and Spotify, and stay tuned for more episodes to come.
